Q: During a quick review of a recently revised standard, ISO 19011:2011– Guidelines for auditing management systems, we noticed that it is shorter than ANSI/ISO/ASQ 19011S:2008.
Also, we are wondering why there are no references to auditing the requirements in ANSI/ISO/ASQ Q9001-2008 Quality management systems.
Could someone please address our concerns?
A: With the expansion in scope of ISO 19011:2011 to cover all management system audits, the intent of the ISO 19011 standard is to provide guidance that is applicable to every management system discipline – not just quality management system audits.
One of the problems with the more general scope of ISO 19011:2011 is that it less helpful for addressing specific issues – such as internal audits of an organization’s quality monitoring and measuring processes. This is why the ASC Z1-auditing subcommittee has initiated the process of developing supplemental guidance documents for internal audits and supply chain audits. If there are specific issues or questions that you are interested in, you can ask that it be included in this supplemental guidance document (email standards@asq.org).
As to the difference in length – with the U.S. adoption of ISO 19011:2011, the 2008 U.S. Supplement was made obsolete. What the Z1-auditing subcommittee is planning to do is to capture whatever guidance in that document is still important in the new supplemental guidance documents being drafted.
Thea Dunmire, JD, CIH, CSP
Chair, ASC Z1-Audit Subcommittee
ENLAR Compliance Services, Inc.
http://www.enlar.com/
Largo, FL
For more on this topic, please visit ASQ’s website.